'We're Gonna Crash': The Final Air Traffic Audio From the Learjet That Fell in Palm Beach County
The LiveATC recordings trace the jet's last minutes — icing and turbulence at minus 47 degrees, then a descent that passed 20,000 feet per minute before the crew's final call.
GREENACRES — The final minutes of the Learjet 60 that crashed in Palm Beach County on Sunday can now be heard in the crew's own transmissions. Air traffic control recordings archived by LiveATC.Net, reported by FOX 13 News, capture the pilots first working a difficult but manageable flight — moderate turbulence, icing, precipitation, an outside air temperature of minus 47 degrees Celsius — and then, suddenly, an aircraft coming down faster than it could be saved.
In the recordings, the crew reports descending at 10,000 feet per minute and declares an emergency as flight 722 Bravo Delta; moments later the descent is reported at 20,000 feet per minute in an overspeed condition. The pilot's last clear transmissions are the ones no controller wants to hear: 'We're gonna crash into the ground,' followed by a report of banking 60 degrees, and the controller answering, in the archive's account, that he was there with them and asking them to talk to him. The jet went down around 12:50 p.m. Sunday near Palm Springs, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, on a flight from Austin, Texas, to North Eleuthera in the Bahamas; all nine people aboard were killed.
What the recordings do not do is explain the crash — that remains the National Transportation Safety Board's work, and its investigators brief in West Palm Beach today. Authorities have not released the identities of the nine victims, and Gov. Ron DeSantis said at his Sunday briefing that officials do not yet know whether any of the passengers or crew were Florida residents. The audio establishes the sequence the investigators will now test against the wreckage and the flight recorders: a routine report of ice and turbulence, and then a descent no one on the frequency could arrest.
